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Title (to Land)
Nothing in the reform we propose would disturb
property titles. Secure title to land is
vitally important. It is not the possession of the land that needs to be
shared; rather, it is the rent that is legitimately common
property. The land will be put to its best use
only if title is secure, and this is one of the
important functions of law.
Proving
Title
Years ago, a New Orleans lawyer sought an FHA
loan for a client. He was told the loan would be
granted IF he could prove satisfactory title to a
parcel of property being offered as collateral. No
big deal; customary request.
The title of the property dated back to 1803.
Instead of tracing title back 50 years, the customary
amount, the lawyer traced it all the way back to
1803. This took him three months.
...
For the edification of uninformed FHA
bureaucrats, the title to the land prior to U.S.
ownership was obtained from France, which had
acquired it by right of conquest from Spain. The land
came into possession of Spain by right of conquest
made in the year 1492 by a sea captain named
Christopher Columbus, who had been granted the
privilege of seeking a new route to India by the
Spanish monarch, Isabella. The good queen Isabella,
being a pious woman and almost as careful about
titles as the FHA, took the precaution of securing
the blessing of the Pope before she sold her jewels
to finance Columbus' expedition.
Now the Pope, as I'm sure you may know, is the
emissary of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and God, it
is commonly accepted, created this world. Therefore,
I believe it is safe to presume that God also made
that part of the world called Louisiana. God,
therefore, would be the owner of origin and His
origins date back to before the beginning of time and
of the world as we AND the FHA know it. I hope to
hell you find God's original claim to be
satisfactory.
Henry George: Thy Kingdom Come (1889
speech)
.. There was a little dialogue
published in the United States, in the west, some time
ago. Possibly you may have seen it. It is between a boy
and his father when visiting a brickyard. The boy looks
at the men making bricks, and he asks who those dirty
men are, why they are making up the clay, and what they
are doing it for. He learns, and then he asks about the
owner of the brickyard. “He does not make any
bricks; he gets his income from letting the other men
make bricks.”
Then the boy wants to know how the
man who owns the brickyard gets his title to the
brickyard — whether he made it. “No, he did
not make it,” the father replies: “God made
it.” The boy asks, “Did God make it for
him?” Whereat his father tells him that he must
not ask questions such as that, but that anyhow it is
all right, and it is all in accordance with God’s
law. The boy, who of course was a Sunday school boy,
and had been to church, goes off mumbling to himself
“that God so loved the world that He gave His
only begotten Son to die for all men”; but that
He so loved the owner of this brickyard that He gave
him the brickyard too.
This has a blasphemous sound. But
I do not refer to it lightly. I do not like to speak
lightly of sacred subjects. Yet it is well sometimes
that we should be fairly shocked into
thinking.
Think of what Christianity teaches
us; think of the life and death of Him who came to die
for us! Think of His teachings, that we are all the
equal children of an Almighty Father, who is no
respecter of persons, and then think of this legalised
injustice — this denial of the most important,
most fundamental rights of the children of God, which
so many of the very men who teach Christianity uphold;
nay, which they blasphemously assert is the design and
the intent of the Creator Himself. ... Read the whole
speech
Poverty deepens as wealth increases, and wages
are forced down while productive power grows,
because land, which is the source of all wealth and
the field of all labor, is monopolized. To
extirpate poverty, to make wages what justice
commands they should be, the full earnings of the
laborer, we must therefore substitute for the
individual ownership of land a common
ownership.*
*By the phrase "common ownership"
of land, Henry George did not mean that land
should be held in common or by the State, nor did
he propose to interfere with the existing system
of land tenures. (See Sections 7 and 12, post.)
As in this condensation much of George's argument
necessarily has been omitted, the following
extracts from his later work "Protection or Free
Trade," chapter XXVI, are appended to make his
position clear to the present reader.
"No one would sow a crop, or
build a house, or open a mine, or plant an
orchard, or cut a drain, so long as any one
else could come in and turn him out of the land
in which or on which such improvement must be
fixed. Thus is it absolutely necessary to the
proper use and improvement of land that society
should secure to the user and improver safe
possession. ... We can leave land now being
used in the secure possession of those using
it. ... on condition that those who hold land
shall pay to the community a ... rent based on
the value of the privilege the individual
receives from the community in being accorded
the exclusive use of this much of the common
property, and which should have no reference to
any improvement he has made in or on it, or to
any profit due to the use of his labor and
capital. In this way all would be placed on an
equality in regard to the use and enjoyment of
those natural elements which are clearly the
common heritage."
Your use, in so many passages of your Encyclical, of
the inclusive term “property” or
“private” property, of which in morals
nothing can be either affirmed or denied, makes your
meaning, if we take isolated sentences, in many places
ambiguous. But reading it as a whole, there can be no
doubt of your intention that private property in land
shall be understood when you speak merely of private
property. With this interpretation, I find that the
reasons you urge for private property in land are
eight. Let us consider them in order of presentation.
You urge:
1. That what is bought with rightful property is
rightful property. (RN, paragraph 5) ...
2. That private property in land proceeds from
man’s gift of reason. (RN, paragraphs 6-7.)
...
3. That private property in land deprives no one of the
use of land. (RN, paragraph 8.) ...
4. That Industry expended on land gives ownership in
the land itself. (RN, paragraphs 9-10.) ...
5. That private property in land has the support of the
common opinion of mankind, and has conduced to peace
and tranquillity, and that it is sanctioned by Divine
Law. (RN, paragraph 11.) ...
6. That fathers should provide for their children and
that private property in land is necessary to enable
them to do so. (RN, paragraphs 14-17.) ...
7. That the private ownership of land stimulates
industry, increases wealth, and attaches men to the
soil and to their country. (RN, paragraph 51.)
...
8. That the right to possess private property in land
is from nature, not from man; that the state has no
right to abolish it, and that to take the value of
landownership in taxation would be unjust and cruel to
the private owner. (RN, paragraph 51.) ...
4. That Industry expended on land gives
ownership in the land itself. (9-10.)
Your Holiness next contends that industry expended
on land gives a right to ownership of the land, and
that the improvement of land creates benefits
indistinguishable and inseparable from the land
itself.
This contention, if valid, could only justify the
ownership of land by those who expend industry on it.
It would not justify private property in land as it
exists. On the contrary, it would justify a gigantic
no-rent declaration that would take land from those who
now legally own it, the landlords, and turn it over to
the tenants and laborers. And if it also be that
improvements cannot be distinguished and separated from
the land itself, how could the landlords claim
consideration even for improvements they had made?
But your Holiness cannot mean what your words imply.
What you really mean, I take it, is that the original
justification and title of landownership is in the
expenditure of labor on it. But neither can this
justify private property in land as it exists.
For is it not all but universally true that
existing land titles do not come from use, but from
force or fraud?
Take Italy! Is it not true that the greater part of
the land of Italy is held by those who so far from ever
having expended industry on it have been mere
appropriators of the industry of those who have? Is
this not also true of Great Britain and of other
countries? Even in the United States, where the forces
of concentration have not yet had time fully to operate
and there has been some attempt to give land to users,
it is probably true today that the greater part of the
land is held by those who neither use it nor propose to
use it themselves, but merely hold it to compel others
to pay them for permission to use it.
And if industry give ownership to land what are the
limits of this ownership? If a man may acquire the
ownership of several square miles of land by grazing
sheep on it, does this give to him and his heirs the
ownership of the same land when it is found to contain
rich mines, or when by the growth of population and the
progress of society it is needed for farming, for
gardening, for the close occupation of a great city? Is
it on the rights given by the industry of those who
first used it for grazing cows or growing potatoes that
you would found the title to the land now covered by
the city of New York and having a value of thousands of
millions of dollars?
But your contention is not valid. Industry expended
on land gives ownership in the fruits of that industry,
but not in the land itself, just as industry expended
on the ocean would give a right of ownership to the
fish taken by it, but not a right of ownership in the
ocean. Nor yet is it true that private ownership of
land is necessary to secure the fruits of labor on
land; nor does the improvement of land create benefits
indistinguishable and inseparable from the land itself.
That secure possession is necessary to the use and
improvement of land I have already explained, but that
ownership is not necessary is shown by the fact that in
all civilized countries land owned by one person is
cultivated and improved by other persons. Most
of the cultivated land in the British Islands, as in
Italy and other countries, is cultivated not by owners
but by tenants. And so the costliest buildings are
erected by those who are not owners of the land, but
who have from the owner a mere right of possession for
a time on condition of certain payments.
Nearly the whole of London has been built in this way,
and in New York, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, Sydney
and Melbourne, as well as in continental cities, the
owners of many of the largest edifices will be found to
be different persons from the owners of the ground. So
far from the value of improvements being inseparable
from the value of land, it is in individual
transactions constantly separated. For instance,
one-half of the land on which the immense Grand Pacific
Hotel in Chicago stands was recently separately sold,
and in Ceylon it is a not infrequent occurrence for one
person to own a fruit-tree and another to own the
ground in which it is implanted.
There is, indeed, no improvement of land, whether it
be clearing, plowing, manuring, cultivating, the
digging of cellars, the opening of wells or the
building of houses, that so long as its usefulness
continues does not have a value clearly distinguishable
from the value of the land. For land having such
improvements will always sell or rent for more than
similar land without them.
If, therefore, the state levy a tax equal to what
the land irrespective of improvement would bring, it
will take the benefits of mere ownership, but will
leave the full benefits of use and improvement, which
the prevailing system does not do. And since the
holder, who would still in form continue to be the
owner, could at any time give or sell both possession
and improvements, subject to future assessment by the
state on the value of the land alone, he will be
perfectly free to retain or dispose of the full amount
of property that the exertion of his labor or the
investment of his capital has attached to or stored up
in the land.
Thus, what we propose would secure, as it is
impossible in any other way to secure, what you
properly say is just and right — "that the
results of labor should belong to him who has
labored.” But private property in land — to
allow the holder without adequate payment to the state
to take for himself the benefit of the value that
attaches to land with social growth and improvement
— does take the results of labor from him who has
labored, does turn over the fruits of one man’s
labor to be enjoyed by another. For labor, as
the active factor, is the producer of all wealth. Mere
ownership produces nothing. A man might own a world,
but so sure is the decree that “by the sweat of
thy brow shalt thou eat bread,” that without
labor he could not get a meal or provide himself a
garment. Hence, when the owners of land, by virtue of
their ownership and without laboring themselves, get
the products of labor in abundance, these things must
come from the labor of others, must be the fruits of
others’ sweat, taken from those who have a right
to them and enjoyed by those who have no right to
them.
The only utility of private ownership of land as
distinguished from possession is the evil utility of
giving to the owner products of labor he does not earn.
For until land will yield to its owner some return
beyond that of the labor and capital he expends on it
— that is to say, until by sale or rental he can
without expenditure of labor obtain from it products of
labor, ownership amounts to no more than security of
possession, and has no value. Its importance and value
begin only when, either in the present or
prospectively, it will yield a revenue — that is
to say, will enable the owner as owner to obtain
products of labor without exertion on his part, and
thus to enjoy the results of others’ labor.
What largely keeps men from realizing the robbery
involved in private property in land is that in the
most striking cases the robbery is not of individuals,
but of the community. For, as I have before explained,
it is impossible for rent in the economic sense —
that value which attaches to land by reason of social
growth and improvement — to go to the user. It
can go only to the owner or to the community. Thus
those who pay enormous rents for the use of land in
such centers as London or New York are not individually
injured. Individually they get a return for what they
pay, and must feel that they have no better right to
the use of such peculiarly advantageous localities
without paying for it than have thousands of others.
And so, not thinking or not caring for the interests of
the community, they make no objection to the
system.
It recently came to light in New York that a man
having no title whatever had been for years collecting
rents on a piece of land that the growth of the city
had made very valuable. Those who paid these rents had
never stopped to ask whether he had any right to them.
They felt that they had no right to land that so many
others would like to have, without paying for it, and
did not think of, or did not care for, the rights of
all. ...
8. That the right to possess private
property in land is from nature, not from man; that the
state has no right to abolish it, and that to take the
value of landownership in taxation would be unjust and
cruel to the private owner. (51.)
This, like much else that your Holiness says, is
masked in the use of the indefinite terms
“private property” and “private
owner” — a want of precision in the use of
words that has doubtless aided in the confusion of your
own thought. But the context leaves no doubt that by
private property you mean private property in land, and
by private owner, the private owner of land.
The contention, thus made, that private property in
land is from nature, not from man, has no other basis
than the confounding of ownership with possession and
the ascription to property in land of what belongs to
its contradictory, property in the proceeds of labor.
You do not attempt to show for it any other basis, nor
has any one else ever attempted to do so. That private
property in the products of labor is from nature is
clear, for nature gives such things to labor and to
labor alone. Of every article of this kind, we know
that it came into being as nature’s response to
the exertion of an individual man or of individual men
— given by nature directly and exclusively to him
or to them. Thus there inheres in such things a right
of private property, which originates from and goes
back to the source of ownership, the maker of the
thing. This right is anterior to the state and superior
to its enactments, so that, as we hold, it is a
violation of natural right and an injustice to the
private owner for the state to tax the processes and
products of labor. They do not belong to Caesar. They
are things that God, of whom nature is but an
expression, gives to those who apply for them in the
way he has appointed — by labor.
But who will dare trace the individual ownership of
land to any grant from the Maker of land? What does
nature give to such ownership? how does she in any way
recognize it? Will any one show from difference of form
or feature, of stature or complexion, from dissection
of their bodies or analysis of their powers and needs,
that one man was intended by nature to own land and
another to live on it as his tenant? That which derives
its existence from man and passes away like him, which
is indeed but the evanescent expression of his labor,
man may hold and transfer as the exclusive property of
the individual; but how can such individual ownership
attach to land, which existed before man was, and which
continues to exist while the generations of men come
and go — the unfailing storehouse that the
Creator gives to man for “the daily supply of his
daily wants”?
Clearly, the private ownership of land is from the
state, not from nature. Thus, not merely can no
objection be made on the score of morals when it is
proposed that the state shall abolish it altogether,
but insomuch as it is a violation of natural right, its
existence involving a gross injustice on the part of
the state, an “impious violation of the
benevolent intention of the Creator,” it is a
moral duty that the state so abolish it.
So far from there being anything unjust in taking
the full value of landownership for the use of the
community, the real injustice is in leaving it in
private hands — an injustice that amounts to
robbery and murder.
And when your Holiness shall see this I have no fear
that you will listen for one moment to the impudent
plea that before the community can take what God
intended it to take — before men who have been
disinherited of their natural rights can be restored to
them, the present owners of land shall first be
compensated.
For not only will you see that the single tax will
directly and largely benefit small landowners, whose
interests as laborers and capitalists are much greater
than their interests as landowners, and that though the
great landowners — or rather the propertied class
in general among whom the profits of landownership are
really divided through mortgages, rent-charges, etc.
— would relatively lose, they too would be
absolute gainers in the increased prosperity and
improved morals; but more quickly, more strongly, more
peremptorily than from any calculation of gains or
losses would your duty as a man, your faith as a
Christian, forbid you to listen for one moment to any
such paltering with right and wrong.
Where the state takes some land for public uses it
is only just that those whose land is taken should be
compensated, otherwise some landowners would be treated
more harshly than others. But where, by a measure
affecting all alike, rent is appropriated for the
benefit of all, there can be no claim to compensation.
Compensation in such case would be a continuance of the
same in another form — the giving to landowners
in the shape of interest of what they before got as
rent. Your Holiness knows that justice and injustice
are not thus to be juggled with, and when you fully
realize that land is really the storehouse that God
owes to all his children, you will no more listen to
any demand for compensation for restoring it to them
than Moses would have listened to a demand that Pharaoh
should be compensated before letting the children of
Israel go.
Compensated for what? For giving up what has been
unjustly taken? The demand of landowners for
compensation is not that. We do not seek to spoil the
Egyptians. We do not ask that what has been unjustly
taken from laborers shall be restored. We are willing
that bygones should be bygones and to leave dead wrongs
to bury their dead. We propose to let those who by the
past appropriation of land values have taken the fruits
of labor to retain what they have thus got. We merely
propose that for the future such robbery of labor shall
cease — that for the future, not for the past,
landholders shall pay to the community the rent that to
the community is justly due.... read the whole
letter
Henry George: The Land Question
(1881)
That Irish land titles rest on force and fraud
is true; but so do land titles in every country –
even to a large extent in our own peacefully settled
country. Even in our most recently settled States, how
much land is there to which title has been got by fraud
and perjury and bribery – by the arts of the
lobbyist or the cunning tricks of hired lawyers, by
double-barreled shotguns and repeating rifles?
...
Either the land of Ireland
rightfully belongs to the Irish landlords, or it
rightfully belongs to the Irish people; there can be no
middle ground. If it rightfully belongs to the landlords,
then is the whole agitation wrong, and every scheme for
interfering in any way with the landlords is condemned.
If the land rightfully belongs to the landlords, then it
is nobody else's business what they do with it, or what
rent they charge for it, or where or how they spend the
money they draw from it, and whoever does not want to
live upon it on the landlords' terms is at perfect
liberty to starve or emigrate. But if, on the contrary,
the land of Ireland rightfully belongs to the Irish
people, then the only logical demand is, not that the
tenants shall be made joint owners with the landlords,
not that it be bought from a smaller class and sold to a
larger class, but that it be resumed by the whole people.
To propose to pay the landlords for it is to deny the
right of the people to it. The real fight for Irish
rights must he made outside of Ireland; and, above all
things, the Irish agitators ought to take a logical
position, based upon a broad, clear principle which can
be everywhere understood and appreciated. To ask for
tenant-right or peasant proprietorship is not to take
such a position; to concede that the landlords ought to
be paid is utterly to abandon the principle that the land
belongs rightfully to the people.
To admit, as even the most radical
of the Irish agitators seem to admit, that the landlords
should be paid the value of their lands, is to deny the
rights of the people. It is an admission that the
agitation is an interference with the just rights of
property. It is to ignore the only principle on which the
agitation can be justified, and on which it can gather
strength for the accomplishment of anything real and
permanent. To admit this is to admit that the Irish
people have no more right to the soil of Ireland than any
outsider. For, any outsider can go to Ireland and buy
land, if he will give its market value. To propose to buy
out the landlords is to propose to continue the present
injustice in another form. They would get in interest on
the debt created what they now get in rent. They would
still have a lien upon Irish labor.
And why should the landlords be
paid? If the land of Ireland belongs of natural right to
the Irish people, what valid claim for payment can be set
up by the landlords? No one will contend that the land is
theirs of natural right, for the day has gone by when men
could be told that the Creator of the universe intended
his bounty for the exclusive use and benefit of a
privileged class of his creatures – that he
intended a few to roll in luxury while their fellows
toiled and starved for them. The claim of the landlords
to the land rests not on natural right, but merely on
municipal law – on municipal law which contravenes
natural right. And, whenever the sovereign power changes
municipal law so as to conform to natural right, what
claim can they assert to compensation? Some of them bought their lands, it is true; but
they got no better title than the seller had to give. And
what are these titles? Titles based on murder and
robbery, on blood and rapine–titles which rest on
the most atrocious and wholesale crimes. Created by force
and maintained by force, they have not behind them the
first shadow of right. That Henry II and James I and
Cromwell and the Long Parliament had the power to give
and grant Irish lands is true; but will any one contend
they had the right? Will any one contend that in all the
past generations there has existed on the British Isles
or anywhere else any human being, or any number of human
beings, who had the right to say that in the year 1881
the great mass of Irishmen should be compelled to pay
– in many cases to residents of England, France, or
the United States – for the privilege of living in
their native country and making a living from their
native soil? Even if it be said that might makes
right; even if it be contended that in the twelfth, or
seventeenth, or eighteenth century lived men who, having
the power, had therefore the right, to give away the soil
of Ireland, it cannot be contended that their right went
further than their power, or that their gifts and grants
are binding on the men of the present generation. No one
can urge such a preposterous doctrine. And, if might
makes right, then the moment the people get power to take
the land the rights of the present landholders utterly
cease, and any proposal to compensate them is a proposal
to do a fresh wrong. ... read
the whole article
Henry George: The Crime of
Poverty (1885 speech)
There is a square in New York — Stuyvesant
Square that is locked up at six o'clock every evening,
even on the long summer evenings. Why is it locked up?
Why are the children not allowed to play there? Why
because old Mr. Stuyvesant, dead and gone I don't know
how many years ago, so willed it. Now can anything be
more absurd?*
*After a popular agitation, the park
authorities since decided to have the gates open later
than six o'clock.
Yet that is not any more absurd
than our land titles. From whom do they come? Dead
man after dead man. Suppose you get on the cars here
going to Council Bluffs or Chicago. You find a passenger
with his baggage strewn over the seats. You say: "Will
you give me a seat, if you please, sir?" He replies: "No;
I bought this seat." "Bought this seat? From whom did you
buy it?" I bought it from the man who got out at the last
station," That is the way we manage this earth of
ours.
Is it not a self-evident truth, as Thomas
Jefferson said, that "the land belongs in usufruct to the
living," and that they who have died have left it, and
have no power to say how it shall be disposed of? Title
to land! Where can a man get any title which makes the
earth his property? There is a sacred right to property
— sacred because ordained by the laws of nature,
that is to say, by the laws of God, and necessary to
social order and civilisation. That is the right of
property in things produced by labour; it rests on the
right of a man to himself. That which a man produces,
that is his against all the world, to give or to keep, to
lend, to sell or to bequeath; but how can he get such a
right to land when it was here before he came? Individual
claims to land rest only on appropriation. I read in a
recent number of the "Nineteenth Century," possibly some
of you may have read it, an article by an ex-prime
minister of Australia in which there was a little story
that attracted my attention. It was of a man named
Galahard, who in the early days got up to the top of a
high hill in one of the finest parts of western
Australia. He got up there, looked all around, and made
this proclamation: "All the land that is in my sight from
the top of this hill I claim for myself; and all the land
that is out of sight I claim for my son
John."
That story is of universal application. Land
titles everywhere come from just such appropriations.
Now, under certain circumstances, appropriation can give
a right. You invite a company of gentlemen to dinner and
you say to them: "Be seated, gentlemen," and I get into
this chair. Well, that seat for the time being is mine by
the right of appropriation. It would be very
ungentlemanly, it would be very wrong for any one of the
other guests to come up and say: "Get out of that chair;
I want to sit there!" But that right of possession, which
is good so far as the chair is concerned, for the time,
does not give me a right to appropriate all there is on
the table before me. Grant that a man has a right to
appropriate such natural elements as he can use, has he
any right to appropriate more than he can use? Has a
guest in such a case as I have supposed a right to
appropriate more than he needs and make other people
stand up? That is what is done. ... read the
whole speech
Henry George: Thou
Shalt Not Steal (1887 speech)
What we propose to do is to divide up the rent
that comes from land; and that is a very easy
thing.
We need not disturb anybody in possession, we need
not interfere with anybody’s building or
anybody’s improvement. We only need to remit taxes
on all improvements, on all forms of wealth, and put the
tax on the value of the land, exclusive of the
improvements, so that the dog-in-the-manger who is
holding a piece of vacant land will have to pay the same
amount of tax for it as land of similar value with a
building or other improvements upon it. In that way we
would treat the whole land of such a community as being
the common estate of the whole people of the
community.
The people of New York could manage their estate
just as well as any corporation, or any private family,
for that matter. But for the people of New York to resume
their estate and to treat it as their own, it is not
necessary for them to go to any bother of management. It
is not necessary for them to say to any landowner, this
particular piece of land is ours, and no longer
yours.
We can leave land titles just as they are.
We can leave the owners of the land to
call themselves its owners; all we want is the annual
value of the land. Not, mark you, that value which the
owner has created, that value which has been given to it
by improvements; but simply that value which is
given to the bare land by the fact that we are all here
—that has attached to the land because of the
growth of this great community. And, when we take that,
then all inducement to monopolize the land will be gone
— then these very worthy gentlemen who are holding
one-half of the area of this city idle and vacant will
find the taxes they have to pay so high that they will
have to go to work and build houses or otherwise use the
land, or give it away to somebody who will build upon it,
or put it to other productive use. And so it will happen
all over the country. ... read the whole
article
Rev. A. C. Auchmuty: Gems from George, a themed
collection of excerpts from the writings of Henry
George (with links to sources)
NATURE acknowledges no ownership or control in man
save as the result of exertion. In no other way can her
treasures be drawn forth, her powers directed, or her
forces utilized or controlled. She makes no
discriminations among men, but is to all absolutely
impartial. She knows no distinction between master and
slave, king and subject, saint and sinner. All men to her
stand upon an equal footing and have equal rights. She
recognizes no claim but that of labor, and recognizes
that without respect to the claimant. If a pirate spread
his sails, the wind will fill them as well as it will
fill those of a peaceful merchantman or missionary bark;
if a king and a common man be thrown overboard, neither
can keep his head above the water except by swimming;
birds will not come to be shot by the proprietor of the
soil any quicker than they will come to be shot by the
poacher; fish will bite or will not bite at a hook in
utter disregard as to whether it is offered them by a
good little boy who goes to Sunday school, or a bad
little boy who plays truant; grain will grow only as the
ground is prepared and the seed is sown; it is only at
the call of labor that ore can be raised from the mine;
the sun shines and the rain falls alike upon just and
unjust. The laws of nature are the decrees of the
Creator. There is written in them no recognition of any
right save that of labor; and in them is written broadly
and clearly the equal right of all men to the use and
enjoyment of nature; to apply to her by their exertions,
and to receive and possess her reward. Hence, as nature
gives only to labor, the exertion of labor in production
is the only title to exclusive possession. —
Progress & Poverty
— Book VII, Chapter 1, Justice of the Remedy:
Injustice of private property in land
PRIVATE property is not of one species, and moral
sanction can no more be asserted universally of it than
of marriage. That proper marriage conforms to the law of
God does not justify the polygamic or polyandric or
incestuous marriages that are in some countries permitted
by the civil law. And as there may be immoral marriage,
so may there be immoral private property. —
The Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo
XIII
THAT any species of property is permitted by the State,
does not of itself give it moral sanction. The State has
often made things property that are not justly property
but involve violence and robbery. —
The Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo
XIII
TO attach to things created by God the same right of
private ownership that justly attaches to things produced
by labor, is to impair and deny the true rights of
property. For a man, who out of the proceeds of his labor
is obliged to pay another man for the use of ocean or air
or sunshine or soil, all of which are to men involved in
the single term land, is in this deprived of his rightful
property, and thus robbed. —
The Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo
XIII
HOW then is it that we are called deniers of the right of
property? It is for the same reason that caused
nine-tenths of the good people in the United States,
north as well as south, to regard abolitionists as
deniers of the right of property; the same reason that
made even John Wesley look on a smuggler as a kind of
robber, and on a custom-house seizer of other men's goods
as a defender of law and order. Where violations of
the right of property have been long sanctioned by
custom and law, it is inevitable that those who really
assert the right of property will at first be thought to
deny it. For under such circumstances the idea of
property becomes confused, and that is thought to be
property which is in reality a violation of property.
—
A Perplexed Philosopher
(The Right Of Property And The Right Of
Taxation)
LANDLORDS must elect to try their case either by human
law or by moral law. If they say that land is
rightly property because made so by human law, they
cannot charge those who would change that law with
advocating robbery. But if they charge that such
change in human law would be robbery, then they must show
that land is rightfully property irrespective of human
law. — The Reduction to Iniquity (a reply to
the Duke of Argyll), The Nineteenth Century, July,
1884
... go to "Gems from
George"
Louis Post: Outlines
of Louis F. Post's Lectures, with Illustrative Notes and
Charts (1894)
Note 56: The ownership of the land is
essentially the ownership of the men who must use
it.
"Let the circumstances be what they may
— the ownership of land will always give the
ownership of men to a degree measured by the necessity
(real or artificial) for the use of land. Place one
hundred men on an island from which there is no escape,
and whether you make one of these men the absolute
owner of the other ninety-nine, or the absolute owner
of the soil of the island, will make no difference
either to him or to them." — Progress and
Poverty, book vii, ch. ii.
Let us imagine a shipwrecked sailor who,
after battling with the waves, touches land upon an
uninhabited but fertile island. Though hungry and naked
and shelterless, he soon has food and clothing and a
house — all of them rude, to be sure, but
comfortable. How does he get them? By applying his
Labor to the Land of the island. In a little while he
lives as comfortably as an isolated man can.
Now let another shipwrecked sailor be
washed ashore. As he is about to step out of the water
the first man accosts him:
"Hello, there! If you want to come
ashore you must agree to be my slave."
The second replies: "I can't. I come
from the United States, where they don't believe in
slavery."
"Oh, I beg your pardon. I didn't know
you came from the United States. I had no intention of
hurting your feelings, you know. But say, they believe
in owning land in the United States, don't they?"
"Yes."
"Very well; you just agree that this
island is mine, and you may come ashore a free
man."
"But how does the island happen to be
yours? Did you make it?"
"No, I didn't make it."
"Have you a title from its maker?"
"No, I haven't any title from its
maker."
"Well, what is your title, anyhow?"
"Oh, my title is good enough. I got here
first."
Of course he got there first. But he
didn't mean to, and he wouldn't have done it if he
could have helped it. But the newcomer is satisfied,
and says:
"Well, that's a good United States
title, so I guess I'll recognize it and come ashore.
But remember, I am to be a free man."
"Certainly you are. Come right along up
to my cabin."
For a time the two get along well enough
together. But on some fine morning the proprietor
concludes that he would rather lie abed than scurry
around for his breakfast and not being in a good humor,
perhaps, he somewhat roughly commands his "brother man"
to cook him a bird.
"What?" exclaims the brother.
"I tell you to go and kill a bird and
cook it for my breakfast."
"That sounds big," sneers the second
free and equal member of the little community; "but
what am I to get for doing this?"
"Oh," the first replies languidly, "if
you kill me a fat bird and cook it nicely, then after I
have had my breakfast off the bird you may cook the
gizzard for your own breakfast. That's pay enough. The
work is easy."
"But I want you to understand that I am
not your slave, and I won't do that work for that pay.
I'll do as much work for you as you do for me, and no
more."
"Then, sir," the first comer shouts in
virtuous wrath, "I want you to understand that my
charity is at an end. I have treated you better than
you deserved in the past, and this is your gratitude.
Now I don't propose to have any loafers on my property.
You will work for the wages I offer or get off my land!
You are perfectly free. Take the wages or leave them.
Do the work or let it alone. There is no slavery here.
But if you are not satisfied with my terms, leave my
island!"
The second man, if accustomed to the
usages of the labor unions, would probably go out and,
to the music of his own violent language about the
"greed of capital," destroy as many bows and arrows as
he could, so as to paralyze the bird-shooting industry;
and this proceeding he would call a strike for honest
wages and the dignity of labor. If he were accustomed
to social reform notions of the namby-pamby variety, he
would propose an arbitration, and be mildly indignant
when told that there was nothing to arbitrate —
that he had only to accept the other's offer or get off
his property. But if a sensible man, he would notify
his comrade that the privilege of owning islands in
that latitude had expired. ...
c. The Law of Division of Labor and
Trade
Now, what is it that leads men to conform their
conduct to the principle illustrated by the last chart?
Why do they divide their labor, and trade its products? A
simple, universal and familiar law of human nature moves
them. Whether men be isolated, or be living in primitive
communities, or in advanced states of civilization, their
demand for consumption determines the direction of Labor
in production.67 That is the law. Considered in
connection with a solitary individual, like Robinson
Crusoe upon his island, it is obvious. What he demanded
for consumption he was obliged to produce. Even as to the
goods he collected from stranded ships — desiring
to consume them, he was obliged to labor to produce them
to places of safety. His demand for consumption always
determined the direction of his labor in production.68
And when we remember that what Robinson Crusoe was to his
island in the sea, civilized man as a whole is to this
island in space, we may readily understand the
application of the same simple law to the great body of
labor in the civilized world.69 Nevertheless, the
complexities of civilized life are so likely to obscure
its operation and disguise its relations to social
questions like that of the persistence of poverty as to
make illustration desirable.
68. It is highly significant that while
Robinson Crusoe had unsatisfied wants he was never out
of a job. ...
f. The Single Tax Retains Rent for Common
Use.
To retain Rent for common use it is not necessary to
abolish land-titles, nor to let land out to the highest
bidder, nor to invent some new mechanism of taxation, nor
in any other way to directly change existing modes of
holding land for use, or existing machinery for
collecting public revenues. "Great changes can be best
brought about under old forms."109 Let land be held
nominally as it is now. Let taxes be collected by the
same kind of machinery as now. But abolish all taxes
except those that fall upon actual and potential Rent,
that is to say, upon land values.
109. "Such dupes are men to custom, and
so prone
To rev'rence what is ancient and can plead
A course of long observance for its use,
That even servitude, the worst of ills,
Because delivered down from sire to son
Is kept and guarded as a sacred thing."
—Cowper.
It is only custom that makes the
ownership of land seem reasonable. I have frequently
had occasion to tell of the necessity under which the
city of Cleveland, Ohio, found itself, of paying a
land-owner several thousand dollars for the right to
swing a bridge-draw over his land. When I described the
matter in that way, the story attracted no attention;
it seemed perfectly reasonable to the ordinary lecture
audience. But when I described the transaction as a
payment by the city to a land-owner of thousands of
dollars for the privilege of swinging the draw "through
that man's air," the audience invariably manifested its
appreciation of the absurdity of such an ownership. The
idea of owning air was ridiculous; the idea of owning
land was not. Yet who can explain the difference,
except as a matter of custom?
To the same effect was the question of
the Rev. F. L. Higgins to a friend. While stationed at
Galveston, Tex., Mr. Higgins fell into a discussion
with his friend as to the right of government to make
land private property. The friend argued that no matter
what the abstract right might be, the government had
made private property of land, and people had bought
and sold upon the strength of the government title, and
therefore land titles were morally absolute.
"Suppose," said Mr. Higgins, "that the
government should vest in a corporation title to the
Gulf of Mexico, so that no one could fish there, or
sail there, or do anything in or upon the waters of the
Gulf without permission from the corporation. Would
that be right?"
"No," answered the friend.
"Well, suppose the corporation should
then parcel out the Gulf to different parties until
some of the people came to own the whole Gulf to the
exclusion of everybody else, born and unborn. Could any
such title be acquired by these purchasers, or their
descendants or assignees, as that the rest of the
people if they got the power would not have a moral
right to abrogate it?"
"Certainly not," said the friend.
"Could private titles to the Gulf
possibly become absolute in morals?"
"No."
"Then tell me," asked Mr. Higgins, "what
difference it would make if all the water were taken
off the Gulf and only the bare land left."
If that were done it is doubtful if land-owners could
any longer confiscate enough Rent to be worth the
trouble. Even though some surplus were still kept by
them, it would be so much more easy to secure Wealth by
working for it than by confiscating Rent to private use,
to say nothing of its being so much more respectable,
that speculation in land values would practically be
abandoned. At any rate, the question of a surplus —
Rent in excess of the requirements of the community
— may be readily determined when the principle that
Rent justly belongs to the community and Wages to the
individual shall have been recognized by society in the
adoption of the Single Tax. 110
110. Thomas G. Shearman, Esq., of New
York, author of the famous magazine article on "Who
Owns the United States," estimates that sixty-five per
cent of the present annual value of the land in the
United States would pay all the present expenses of
American government — federal, state, county, and
municipal.
Q53. Is it true that men are equally entitled to
land? Are they not entitled to it in proportion to their
use of it?
A. Yes, they are entitled to it in proportion to their
use of it and it is this title that the single tax would
secure. It would allow every one to possess as much land
as he wished, upon the sole condition that if it has a
value he shall account to the community for that value
and for nothing else; all that he produces from the land
above its value being absolutely his, free even from
taxation. The single tax is the method best adapted to
our circumstances, and to orderly conditions, for
limiting possession of land to its use. By making it
unprofitable to hold land except for use, or to hold more
than can be used to advantage, it constitutes every man
his own judge of the amount and the character of the land
that he can use.
Q60. If the value of land be destroyed by the
single tax, would not justice require that land-owners be
compensated?
A. No. Land is given for the use of all, and rent is
produced by the community as a whole. To legally vest
land-ownership in less than the whole, excluding those to
come as well as those that are here, is a moral crime
against all who are excluded. Therefore no government can
make a perpetual title to land which is or can become
morally binding. Neither can one generation vest the
communal earnings of future generations in particular
persons by any morally valid title, as they certainly
attempt to do when they make grants of land. There is
both divine justice and economic wisdom in the command
that "the land shall not be sold in perpetuity." In the
forum of morals all titles to land are subject to
absolute divestment as soon as the people decide upon the
change.
Q61. If a man buys land in good faith, under the
laws under which we live, is he not entitled to
compensation for his individual loss when titles are
abolished?
A. There is no sounder principle of law than that which,
distinguishing the contractual from the legislative
powers of government, prescribes that government cannot
tie up its legislative powers. Now, land tenures and
taxation are so clearly matters of general public policy
that no one would deny that they are legislative and not
contractual in character. It follows that titles to land,
and privileges of more or less exemption from taxation,
are voidable at the pleasure of the people. And the
possibility of such action on the part of the people is
as truly a part of every grant of land as if it were
written expressly in the body of the instrument.
Moreover, notice was given when Henry George published
"Progress and Poverty," and has been reiterated often
since in louder and louder tones until the whole
civilized world has become cognizant of it, that an
effort is in progress to do what is in effect this very
thing. That notice is a moral cloud upon every title, and
he who buys now buys with notice. It will not do for him
when the time comes, to say: "I relied upon the good
faith of the government whose laws told me I might buy."
He has notice, and if he buys he buys at his peril. Men
cannot be allowed to make bets that the effort to retain
land values for common use will fail, and then when they
lose their bets call upon the people to compensate them
for the loss. Read the chapter on
"Compensation" in Henry George's "Perplexed
Philosopher." ... read the book
Charles B. Fillebrown: A Catechism of Natural
Taxation, from Principles of Natural Taxation
(1917)
Q3. What is meant by economic rent?
A. Gross ground rent -- the annual site value of land --
what land, including any quality or content of the land
itself, is worth annually for use -- what the land does
or would command for use per annum if offered in open
market -- the annual value of the exclusive use in
control of a given area of land, involving the enjoyment
of those "rights and privileges thereto pertaining" which
are stipulated in every title deed, and which, enumerated
specifically, are as follows: right and ease of access
to
* water, and
* health inspection,
* sewerage,
* fire protection,
* police,
* schools,
* libraries,
* museums,
* parks,
* playgrounds,
* steam and electric railway service,
* gas and electric lighting,
* telegraph and telephone service,
* subways,
* ferries,
* churches,
* public schools,
* private schools,
* colleges,
* universities,
* public buildings --
utilities which depend for their efficiency and
economy on the character of the government; which
collectively constitute the economic and social
advantages of the land which are due to the presence and
activity of population, and are inseparable therefrom,
including the benefit of proximity to, and command of,
facilities for commerce and communication with the world
-- an artificial value created primarily through public
expenditure of taxes. For the sake of brevity, the
substance of this definition may be conveniently
expressed as the value of "proximity." It is ordinarily
measured by interest on investment plus taxes.
Q13. What is meant by the right of
property?
A. As to the grain a man raises, or the house that he
builds, it means ownership full and complete. As to land,
it means legal title, tenure, "estate in land," perpetual
right of exclusive possession, a right not absolute, but
superior to that of any other man.
Q46. Would it not be confiscation so to increase
the tax on land?
A. What would be confiscated? No land would be taken, no
right of occupancy, or use, or improvement, or sale, or
devise; nothing would be taken that is conveyed or
guaranteed by the title deed.
Q47. What is the distinction between taxation and
confiscation?
A. The sovereign state may appropriate private property
of its citizens in two ways: (1) by confiscation; (2) by
taxation. When one particular man by treason or otherwise
has forfeited his rights as a citizen, the land and
houses and personalty of this one man may all be "forfeit
to the crown," while the validity and sanctity of 9,999
other men's rights are in no way infringed. This is
confiscation. On the other hand, when the state, in order
to obtain the revenue to meet the expenses of government,
levies tribute upon its 10,000 citizens impartially, this
is taxation.
Q48. But would it not be an injustice to the
landowner?
A. If it be an injustice to tax hard-earned incomes
(wages) to maintain an unearned income (net economic
rent) that bears no tax burden, how can it be an
injustice to stop doing so? There can be no injustice in
taking for the benefit of the community the value that is
created by the community.
... read
the whole article
Nic Tideman: The Case
for Site Value Rating
The Social Justice of Site Value
Rating
The Efficiency of Site Value Rating
How Valuations would be Made
Both for reasons of social justice and
for reasons of economic efficiency, site value rating
deserves a continued place in the programme of the Liberal
Party.
The case for site value rating in
terms of social justice is founded on two understandings:
first, that the value of land in the absence of economic
development is the common heritage of humanity, and second,
that increases in the rental value of land arising from
economic development and government expenditures should be
collected by governments to finance those activities. What
is meant by "land" is the unimproved value of sites and the
value of extractable natural resources such as North Sea
oil.
While there may someday be
institutions capable of implementing a recognition of land
as the heritage of all humanity on a worldwide basis, in
the absence of such institutions each nation should
implement a recognition that land within its boundaries is
the common heritage of its citizens. This is accomplished
not by making the nation a gigantic Common or by
instituting government management of all land, but rather
by requiring all persons and corporations that are granted
the use of land to pay a fee or tax equal to what the
rental value of the land they control would be if it were
in an unimproved condition.
The case for site value rating in
terms of economic efficiency is founded on the fact that a
tax on resources that are not produced by human effort is
one of the few sources of government revenue that does not
reduce incentives for people to be productive. Two other
revenue sources that have this virtue are taxes on other
government-granted privileges such as exclusive use of
radio frequencies and taxes on activities with harmful
consequences, such as polluting the air. An economy will be
more efficient if revenue sources that do not diminish
productivity are employed to the greatest possible extent
before any use is made of taxes that impede
productivity.
What makes a tax efficient is that the
amount of tax that is due cannot be reduced by reducing
productive activities. When incomes are taxed, people can
reduce the amount of taxes owed by working less. They do
so, and the productivity of the economy falls. When houses
are taxed, people can reduce the amount of taxes owed by
building fewer house and smaller houses. They do so, and
the housing shortage worsens. But when the unimproved value
of land is taxed, there is no resulting diminution in the
quantity of land. Thus taxes can be levied on land without
diminishing the productivity of an economy. And shifting
taxes from other, destructive bases to land will improve
the productivity of an economy.
Subsequent sections explain in more
detail these social justice and efficiency arguments for
site value rating, describe procedures for implementing
such a tax system, and explain why a variety of potential
objections are without merit.
The Social Justice of Site
Value Rating
In primitive societies, land is
generally regarded as not ownable. No one made the land, so
how can anyone own it? Ownership generally originates in
conquest. In England, titles to land originated in the
claim of William the Conqueror to own all the land because
he was king. He granted to dukes, earls, etc. the right to
collect rent from designated territories in exchange for
their promises to fulfill various obligations to him. In
the seventeenth century the nobility succeeded in removing
all of their obligations to the crown, but they retained
their rights to land. A substantial part of the great
inequality in wealth in the United Kingdom can be traced to
ancient patents of nobility that granted rights to collect
rent.
One highly visible consequence of
allowing land rents to be privately appropriated is that
young people find it nearly impossible to buy houses. The
price of a "house," in the Southeast of Britain at least,
is primarily the price of land. If the rent of land were
collected publicly, the price of land would be
inconsequential, and the price of a house would be the cost
of the materials and labour that went into building it. It
should be recognized that if the site value of land were
taxed, the payment of such taxes would make it more
expensive to live in large cities than in small towns, but
young people would be better able to afford it because
other taxes would be reduced, and the mortgages to which
people would need to commit themselves would not be nearly
as great.
The justice of collecting the rent of
land can be generalized to the justice of collecting a fee
for any privilege that governments grant to some
individuals and not others. The value of the special
privilege for a few that is entailed in planning permission
would be recouped automatically in collecting the rental
value of land. A version of social collection of the
value of privilege occurs in the present government's
auctioning of ten-year broadcast licenses. For the same
reason that people are justly required to pay for broadcast
licenses,
- individuals who have the exclusive use of
desirable number plates should pay annually for that
privilege.
- Airline companies with exclusive landing
rights should pay annually what other airlines would be
willing to pay for such rights.
- People who have fishing rights that are denied
to others should pay annually according to the value of
those rights.
The general principle involved in all of these
examples is that whenever a government grants a right to
some and not to others, those who are granted such rights
should pay annually, to the government, the value of
those rights, measured by what others who do not have
them would be willing to pay to have them.
Private appropriation of rent and
other privileges makes it necessary for governments to look
elsewhere for revenue, with the consequence that even
persons with very low incomes are required to turn over
part of what little they earn to the state. In justice we
ought to allow everyone, but especially those whose
earnings are lowest, to allocate what they produce as they
themselves choose. ... Read the whole
article
Nic Tideman: Peace, Justice and Economic
Reform
These components of the classical liberal
conception of justice are held by two groups that hold
conflicting views on a companion issue of great
importance: how are claims of exclusive access to natural
opportunities to be established?
John Locke qualified his statement
that we own what we produce with his famous "proviso" that
there be "as much and as good left in common for others." A
few pages later, writing in the last decade of the
seventeenth century, he said that private appropriations of
land are actually not restricted, because anyone who is
dissatisfied with the land available to him in Europe can
always go to America, where there is plenty of unclaimed
land.[12] Locke does not
address the issue of rights to land when land is
scarce.
One tradition in classical liberalism
concerning claims to land is that of the "homesteading libertarians," as exemplified by
Murray Rothbard, who say that there is really no need to be
concerned with Locke's proviso. Natural opportunities
belong to whoever first appropriates them, regardless of
whether opportunities of equal value are available to
others.[13]
The other tradition is that of the
"geoists," as inspired if not
exemplified by Henry George, who say that, whenever natural
opportunities are scarce, each person has an obligation to
ensure that the per capita value of the natural
opportunities that he leaves for others is as great as the
value of the natural opportunities that he claims for
himself.[14] Any excess in
one's claim generates an obligation to compensate those who
thereby have less. George actually proposed the nearly
equivalent idea, that all or nearly all of the rental value
of land should be collected in taxes, and all other taxes
should be abolished. The geoist position as I have
expressed it emphasizes the idea that, at least when value
generated by public services is not an issue, rights to
land are fundamentally rights of individuals, not rights of
governments.
There are two fundamental problems
with the position of homesteading libertarians on claims to
land. The first problem is the incongruity with historical
reality. Humans have emerged from an environment of
violence. Those who now have titles to land can trace those
titles back only so far, before they come to events where
fiat backed by violence determined title. And the persons
who were displaced at that time themselves had titles that
originated in violence. If there ever were humans who
acquired the use of land without forcibly displacing other
humans, we have no way of knowing who they were or who
their current descendants might be. There is, in practice,
no way of assigning land to the legitimate successors of
the persons who first claimed land. And to assign titles
based on any fraction of history is to reward the last land
seizures that are not rectified.
The second fundamental problem with
the position of the homesteading libertarians is that, even
if there were previously unsettled land to be allocated,
say a new continent emerging from the ocean, first grabbing
would make no sense as a criterion for allocating
land.
It would be inefficient, for one
thing, as people stampeded to do whatever was necessary to
establish their claims. But that is not decisive because,
if we are concerned with justice, it might be necessary for
us to tolerate inefficiency. But the homesteading
libertarian view makes no sense in terms of justice. "I get
it all because I got here first," isn't
justice.
Justice -- the balancing of the scales
-- is the geoist position, "I get
exclusive access to this natural opportunity because I have
left natural opportunities of equal value for you." (How
one compares, in practice, the value of different natural
opportunities is a bit complex. If you really want to know,
you can invite me back for another lecture.)
Justice is thus a regime in which persons have the
greatest possible individual liberty, and all acknowledge
an obligation to share equally the value of natural
opportunities. Justice is economic reform--the abolition
of all taxes on labor and capital, the acceptance of
individual responsibility, the creation of institutions
that will provide equal sharing the value of natural
opportunities. ...
Read the entire
article
Mason Gaffney: Rent
Seeking and Global Conflict
Self-evidently, rivalry to appropriate limited
rent-yielding resources must lead to conflict. It has to,
because land is not produced, nor stored up like capital
by saving. Modern economics glosses over this by
stressing that land, like other resources, is allocated
by the market. That may be, but distribution is something
else. Every land title in the world goes
back to a taking by force.
It will be objected that one can buy
in peacefully once a tenure is firmly established, with
alienable titles. There is certainly no intent to deny
this. The problem is that a successor-in-interest stands on
no firmer footing than the original. There
is no laundering: every landholder can consult his chain of
title and see how it originated.. Indeed, it has been said
that those who buy stolen property are the chief cause of
crime. Fencing itself is a crime.
However one may side on that question,
it helps account for the extreme alarm with which US
statecraft startles at any foreign country, however weak
and innocuous, which expropriates any such
successor-in-interest. Demonstration effects are contagious
and threatening. The defensiveness of the insecure is a
major cause of global conflict.
More destabilizing yet is the
ambitious rent-seeker offshore, who finds his biggest gains
in the riskiest ways, ways that unfortunately impose high
risks on the U.S. The biggest gains to rent-seekers come
from buying in on the ground floor, cheap, when tenures are
precarious or uncertain. ... Read the
whole article
Karl Williams:
Social Justice In
Australia: ADVANCED KIT - Part 2
WHO WILL OWN THE
LAND?
"For justice to be done between
men it is not necessary for the State to take the land;
it is only necessary to take its rent." - Henry
George, (1839 -1897)
The above quote just about says it all. However,
because of a good deal of misinformation about this
aspect of Geonomics (with a liberal sprinkling of
half-baked, alarmist words such as socialisation,
nationalisation or confiscation with respect to land), we
need to get things straight.
Land titles would definitely still exist with
Geonomics. People would still have "their" home and
"their" privacy, and there's nothing unfair or
unreasonable about that. Indeed, it is a universal human
need that cannot be denied and should not be thwarted.
Importantly, land occupancy requires not so much absolute
and outright ownership, but security of tenure, and as a
corollary, the freedom to do as one wishes with the site,
within the limits of course, of existing social mores.
Whether building a house, enrolling your kids in the
nearby school, or just wanting to contribute towards
building up a neighbourhood, you would want to know that
you would be able to occupy your home site for as long as
you wished. Hence, your name would still be on a register
of land titles, and no one could compulsorily buy or
force you out as long as you paid your community dues in
the form of LVT. Council by-laws allowing, you could even
put up fences and "Keep Out" signs. All the trappings of
present-day land ownership would still be
there.
WHAT IS
OWNERSHIP?
But what does "ownership" really mean?
- Do we own our income if the government takes a
big cut of it and calls it taxation?
- Are we all part-owners of urban infrastructure
and national parks?
- Do we fully own our cars if we have to pay
registration and insurance, or if we are subject to all
sorts of restrictions on their use?
- Can we be said to fully own our personal
assets if inheritance taxes take a big chunk of their
value when we drop off the twig?
- If you employ people, can you say that you own
part of their time (and that you own them to a
degree)?
The point is that the concept of ownership is not
always black and white, and the same applies to land
under Geonomics.
On the one hand, occupiers of land would be owners
in the sense that they would have the legal security of
tenure as well as all the privacy and personal liberty
today accruing to home ownership. On the other hand,
occupiers would be required to discharge their dues to
the community for their exclusive occupancy of land, the
value of which they did not produce. So with Geonomics,
what people do not "own" is the community-created
benefits of the land they occupy, for which they would
have to pay.
BUT WHAT'S YOURS IS
YOURS!
But don't forget these important points. Occupiers
will unquestionably own outright their houses and other
improvements to their homes - and they would never get
penalised for improvements through local rates, which
today are often partly based on the value of
improvements. Nor will people see a part of their income
or purchases confiscated through the tax system.
Effectively, we would all become co-owners of all the
land and natural resources, as the rent from them is
pooled into the community coffers for the benefit of all.
By some calculations we could even receive a considerable
Citizen's Dividend from the unspent
surplus.
What about those who might be disadvantaged by the
introduction of Geonomics? It should be stressed that
there would be few such people, but there would be a few
deserving types who would qualify for schemes (too
detailed to mention here) such as limited compensation or
deferral of LVT for some on valuable land with low
incomes and too old or incapacitated for employment.
There is no reason why other types of pensions and
disability payments would need to change.
"Whilst another man has no land,
my title to mine, and your title to yours, is at once
vitiated." - Ralph Waldo Emerson, (1803 -1882),
noted American poet and essayist...
Read the entire
article
a synopsis of Robert V. Andelson and James M. Dawsey:
From Wasteland to
Promised land: Liberation Theology for a Post-Marxist
World
Some defenders of the status quo admit that all
land titles may be traced either to acts of force or
fraud (or to the more respectable-sounding "priority of
occupation"). But, they add, we cannot start over;
society has for centuries given legal sanction to private
landed property. Innumerable contracts have been executed
on the basis of this sanction, and these include the good
faith purchase of land. For society to withdraw this
sanction, they claim, would be a breach of
trust.
The passage of time, however,
cannot turn a wrong into a right. Kings and popes and governments never had the moral
right to vest in perpetual ownership what God intended
for the benefit of all. If the acquisition of a
benefit under the law were to establish such a vested
right, no law could ever be amended, since it would
invariably work to someone's disadvantage.
Obviously, change that further rends the fabric of
society is usually self-defeating. And the vast majority
of beneficiaries of unjust structures -- the beleagured
middle classes -- are not intentional wrongdoers but
passive recipients of unearned wealth from a flawed
system they did not create. The dismantling of these
structures, therefore, should, whenever possible, be done
in ways that avoid excessive hardship for them. But it
must be done. Read
the whole synopsis
Robert V. Andelson Henry George and the
Reconstruction of Capitalism
Under Henry George's system, private land
titles would not be disturbed one iota. No one would
be expropriated. Instead, the community would simply take
something approaching the total annual economic rent of
land for public purposes. This amount would be determined
by the value of each site on the free market, not by any
arbitrary governmental fiat. In other words, the
privilege of monopolizing a site is a benefit received
from society and for which society should be fully
compensated; and so, under the Georgist system, the
person who wished to monopolize a site would pay a rent
for it to the community, approaching 100 percent of its
annual rental value, exclusive of improvements.
Let me emphasize that last phrase,
"exclusive of improvements."
- The apartment house owner would pay the full
value of his lot, and nothing on his
building;
- the factory owner would pay the full value of
his site, and nothing on his factory;
- the farmer would pay the full value of his
ground, and nothing on his structures or his crop, his
livestock or his machinery;
- the homeowner would pay the full value of his
lot, and nothing on his house.
If the land had no market value, the
owner would pay nothing; if it had a value, he would pay
regardless of whether he were using it or deriving income
from it. Read the
whole article
Edmund Vance Cooke: Uncivilized
An ancient ape, once on a time,
Disliked exceedingly to climb,
And so he picked him out a tree
And said, "Now this belongs to me.
I have a hunch that monks are mutts
And I can make them gather nuts
And bring the bulk of them to me,
By claiming title to this tree."
He took a green leaf and a reed
And wrote himself a title deed,
Proclaiming pompously and slow:
"All monkeys by these presents know". ... Read
the whole poem
Nic Tideman:
Private Possession as an Alternative to Rental and Private
Ownership for Agricultural Land
One of the reasons that the debate is so fierce
between the advocates of rental and the advocates of
private ownership of agricultural land is that each
position has important strengths as well as important
weaknesses. This paper argues that there is a third
possibility between rental and private ownership that
retains the strengths of both while avoiding the
weaknesses of both. The third possibility is private
possession of land.
I. The Concept of Private Possession of
Land
Like private ownership, a system of private possession
of land involves titles to land that have no termination
date and are freely transferable. Therefore the possessor
of land can be confident of receiving the full benefit of
any improvements that are made to land. Like rental, a
system of private possession of land involves an
obligation to make regular payments to the government for
the use of land. However, the payment is not for the full
rental value of land, but only for the rental value that
land would have in an unimproved condition. This
collection by the government of the value that is
provided by nature and location gives recognition to the
idea that land is the common heritage of all generations,
and should be available to all generations on the same
terms. It insures that prices for titles of possession
will correspond only to the cost of improvements, and
will therefore not be excessive. It eliminates the profit
from land speculation. And it provides a continuing
source of government revenue. ...
Freedom to Transfer Titles of
Possession
Proposals for systems of private ownership of land
often include a proposal that sales of land be prohibited
for some period such as ten years. That such a
restriction would be proposed suggests that the advocates
of private ownership are aware of the impropriety of
large private gains from land speculation. But a
temporary ban on sales does not solve the problem of
private gains from land speculation. At best, it
postpones it. If people are permitted to rent land out,
they can profit from this and then later sell the land.
And when they do sell it, very large speculative gains
can occur. If they are not permitted to rent land out,
then the system implies that land cannot be transferred
to those who could use it best. Economic efficiency
requires that the right to use land be freely
transferable. A system of private possession permits free
transferability without large speculative gains. ...
read the whole article
Nic Tideman:
The Morality of Taxation: The Local Case
But is such a tax fair? Consider first a case in which
everyone has the same number of children. Then the
taxation of land value to finance education is equivalent
to the assertion of an equal claim of everybody to land.
And there is a good basis for such a claim. No one made
the land. The titles to land that we recognize today
generally originated in conquest. Our affection for the
words of the Declaration of Independence, that "All men
are created equal," in conjunction with the recognition
that titles to land are privileges that are created by
government, should lead us to the implication that we
have an obligation to share the benefits of land equally.
As Henry George pointed out (1960 [1879], 403-407), the
sensible way to assert equal rights to land is not to
divide the land equally, but rather to collect the rent
of land and use it for public purposes. A tax on land
takes for public purposes only what nature, public
services, and the growth of communities produce, unlike
taxes on labor and capital, which take what people
produce and which people may properly resent having taken
from them. Thus, at least when everyone has the same
number of children, it is fair to finance education by
taxing land. ...
read the whole article
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